Why Barack Obama Attacks Tim Scott
By The Editorial Board June 19, 2023 5:08 pm ET Former President Barack Obama Photo: Nancy Kaszerman/Zuma Press As America’s first black President, Barack Obama entered office with a promise of improving race relations and reducing political discord. Eight years later, rancor was worse as Mr. Obama’s Administration exploited race as a political weapon on voting rules, criminal justice, and preferences for jobs and much more. This explains why the former President is now attacking South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott. Last week Mr. Obama, who doesn’t riff by accident, went after Mr. Scott and Nikki Haley, two of the GOP’s minority candidates for President. “I think there’s a long history of African-American or other m
Former President Barack Obama
Photo: Nancy Kaszerman/Zuma Press
As America’s first black President, Barack Obama entered office with a promise of improving race relations and reducing political discord. Eight years later, rancor was worse as Mr. Obama’s Administration exploited race as a political weapon on voting rules, criminal justice, and preferences for jobs and much more. This explains why the former President is now attacking South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott.
Last week Mr. Obama, who doesn’t riff by accident, went after Mr. Scott and Nikki Haley, two of the GOP’s minority candidates for President. “I think there’s a long history of African-American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, ‘Everything’s great, and we can all make it.’ I mean, Nikki Haley, I think, has a similar approach,” Obama said on David Axelrod’s podcast.
“I’m not being cynical about Tim Scott individually. I am maybe suggesting that the rhetoric of ‘Can’t we all get along’” has to be “undergirded with an honest accounting of our past and our present,” Mr. Obama said. He added that people can be “rightly skeptical” when a Republican, “who may even be sincere in saying, ‘I want us all to live together,’ doesn’t have a plan for how do we address crippling generational poverty that is a consequence of hundreds of years of racism in this society.”
Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott both rebutted the former President’s patronizing comments. “There’s no higher compliment than to be attacked by President Obama,” Mr. Scott said. “Whenever the Democrats feel threatened, they pull out—drag out—the former President, have him make some negative comments about someone running, hoping that their numbers go down.”
Mr. Scott is right, and it’s worth asking why. You’d think Mr. Obama of all people would be pleased to see minority candidates with serious credentials compete as Republicans for the White House. If both parties compete for the votes of minorities, that could make race less of a polarizing force in American life.
But Democrats can’t abide that or it might upset their advantage among minority voters. If Republicans ever broke through to win 20% of the black vote, for example, Republicans would become the majority party. Democrats want to keep racial tensions boiling with accusations about “ Jim Crow 2.0” and “systemic racism” lest more minority voters give GOP candidates a hearing.
Mr. Scott in particular is a threat because, as he often notes, his life story symbolizes the country’s racial evolution. He has never sugar-coated America’s racist history, noting how he has experienced it in his own life. But he doesn’t use that as an excuse to deny progress.
His ideas to reduce poverty are also far better than Mr. Obama’s default to government dependency and failing public schools. Mr. Scott wants to free minorities from union schools and escape poverty by giving them more economic opportunity. Those ideas are a dagger pointed at the heart of the progressive project that sustains a permanent underclass dependent on Democratic welfare programs. That is the real reason Mr. Obama is attacking Mr. Scott and Ms. Haley.
What's Your Reaction?
